Free Gone (Parallel Trilogy, Book 1) by Christine Kersey

leaned my head back against the pillowy headrest, a feeling of safety flowing over me. Though I’d had a nap earlier, I felt my eyelids began to droop and I felt myself drifting off to sleep. I dreamt that a giant caterpillar was rubbing against me and biting my arm. Then I heard a faint rumbling sound and the caterpillar bit harder. In my sleep I flung my arm to the side and startled awake to a loud “Meow”.
         Gasping in surprise, I found that the caterpillar was actually a large orange tabby, purring vigorously and nipping at my arm.
         “Hi, there,” I said softly, stroking the cat’s fluffy coat. He pressed his head into my hand, looking for a scratch. I obliged and he climbed onto my lap and rubbed against my shirt. “I guess you miss your people. Are you hungry?”
         Then it struck me that someone might be coming by in the morning to feed the cat. Maybe even Mrs. Donaldson. She had mentioned how Rochelle always took care of her cat. It followed that she would take care of the Candee’s cat when they were out of town.
    Should I leave? The thought of searching for some other place to stay exhausted me. Where would I go anyway? But what if I had taken the key that she used to get in? If it wasn’t there when she came to feed the cat, she’d probably call the police. The idea terrified me.
    I lifted the cat from my lap and set him on the floor, then felt my way back to the French doors, opened them, and stepped onto the back patio. After the dim interior of the house, the patio didn’t seem so dark in comparison, with the light from the moon plus the nearby streetlamps. I found the rock that had held the key, slid open the secret compartment and put the key back in before closing it up and putting it back in place.
    As I turned to go back into the house the cat raced past me and out into the yard.
    “Oh no,” I moaned. I was so tired that I hadn’t been thinking clearly and had left the door wide open. I decided that the cat must be an indoor cat, or it wouldn’t have been in the house in the first place. I knew I had to get the cat and bring him back inside or for sure Mrs. Donaldson would know someone had been in the house. She might even suspect it was me.
    “Here kitty, kitty,” I whispered into the yard, seeing the bright orbs of the cat’s eyes as they reflected what little light filtered through the night sky. He seemed to be watching me, daring me to try to catch him. I knew he would be nothing like my dog Goldie, who would run to me when given the smallest bit of encouragement.
    I took a step in his direction and he didn’t move. My hopes rose as I took three more steps. Halfway there now. “Here kitty, kitty,” I called again, barely audible. His ears twitched as he stared at me. “Do you want me to give you a scratch?” He seemed interested, but then looked toward the fence and darted away. I chased after him but he climbed over the fence before I had even reached the edge of the yard.
    I peeked through a knothole in the fence and saw the cat staring back at me from the yard of the neighbor. There was no way I would risk climbing the fence to try to get the cat back. My only hope was that he would get hungry by morning, hopefully before Mrs. Donaldson came over, and want to be let in.
    Angry at myself for making such a stupid mistake, I hurried back across the yard and into the house, locking the door behind me. I decided to explore the house as much as I could in the dark so I could find a comfortable place to spend the night. After being outside where there was some light, the inside seemed very dark and I had a brief flashback to earlier that day when I’d been in the pitch black tunnel. I shuddered at the memory.
    Creeping forward, I felt my way to the couch. I grabbed my jacket and moved past the couch and along an adjacent wall until I came to a hallway, then followed it to the end where I found a closed door. I opened it and found what appeared to be a large